Sagne e lenticchie

Oretta Zanini De Vita and Maureen B. Fant have collaborated on an outstanding new book entitled Sauces & Shapes: Pasta the Italian Way [2013]. Zanini De Vita’s previous two US publications, the celebrated Encyclopedia of Pasta [2009] and Popes, Peasants, and Shepherds – Recipes and Lore from Rome and Lazio [2013], both translated into English by Fant, document Italian culinary traditions. Although one can certainly cook from the Encyclopedia of Pasta (e.g., here and here), and while Popes, Peasants, and Shepherds includes recipes, neither work is a traditional cookbook. Happily and at last, Zanini De Vita has penned a bona fide English-language cookbook, but one with the focus of a passionate Italian food historian and expert. If you enjoy learning about and cooking Italian food, especially pasta, then I highly recommend this excellent book.

In Sauces & Shapes’ Introduction, Fant asks the question “What is in this Book?” The answer lies in the book’s subtitle: Pasta the Italian Way. Zanini De Vita and Fant give “advice for: cooking, serving and eating pasta; stocking a pantry and choosing ingredients; and generally approaching pasta as much like an Italian as anyone outside Italy can.” To this end, the authors include pasta do’s and don’ts: do add cheese to pasta before adding sauce (unless their recipe instructs otherwise); don’t use a fork and spoon to twirl and eat pasta (unless eating capelli d’angelo served in soup); and do serve tortellini in broth (“That is not a suggestion; it’s an order.”). This goodhearted and wry counsel isn’t born from a persnickety mindset, but rather comes from a palpable desire to share authentic Italian cooking.

I have read through the book a couple of times now and have cooked a number of dishes. The recipes come from Zanini De Vita’s research and treasure trove of over 2,200 recipes. Sauces & Shapes includes classics such as Sugo alla marinara; Puttanesca; Amatriciana; and Carbonara. The book also presents more unique offerings such as Boscaiola made with canned tuna and mushrooms; Ragù con le spuntature, a pork rib sauce that includes horseradish; and an agnolotti filled with broccoli rabe and served in a clam sauce.

One of my favorite dishes from the book is a simple soup, Sagne e lenticchie (Lentils and noodles). The recipe’s introduction offers a primer on where the best lentils grow in Italy. Luckily, the Internet makes sourcing these beautiful Italian lentils fairly easy. The soup—more dense than liquid—tastes comforting and utterly delicious. Sauces & Shapes’ version uses fresh pasta that, in my opinion, transforms this classic dish from very good to great.

For the soup:

1 pound (450 grams) lentils, washed and picked over

1 bay leaf

at least 1½ level teaspoons salt (kosher)

3 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil

1 white onion, finely chopped

2 cloves garlic, chopped

2 cups (550 grams) tomato puree

1 small piece dried chile

Before serving:

8 ounces (225 grams) or less pasta

2 tablespoons, or more, best-quality extra virgin olive oil for finishing

Put the lentils in a 4-quart (4-liter) pot, preferably terracotta, with 6 cups (1.5 liters) water and the bay leaf. Add 1 level teaspoon salt, bring to a boil, then cook, covered, over low heat until tender. The cooling time can range from 20 minutes (for the best-quality tiny Italian lentils) to about 45 minutes, so keep your eye on them and check often. They should be tender but not mushy.

Keep a supply of boiling hot lightly salted water available on the stove and add it by the ladleful in the unlikely event your lentils begin to look dry. You can also use the water to make the soup more liquid.

Put the oil in a saucepan and add the onion and garlic. Sauté gently over low heat until transparent, about 10 minutes. Add the tomato puree, the chile, and ½ teaspoon salt. Cook for 20 minutes, or until the sauce is visibly reduced and the oil comes to the surface. Add this sauce to the lentils. You should have about 8 cups total. Taste for salt.

Make ahead note: At this point, the process can be interrupted and the lentils kept until you are ready to complete the dish. The lentils freeze very well, too. They are best reheated in a double boiler.

When you are ready to continue, heat the lentils gently (if they are not already hot), add 2 cups (400 milliliters) lightly salted hot water, stir in the pasta, cover the pot, and cook over low heat until the pasta is al dente, which may be very quick.

Discard the bay leaf, stir in the oil, and let the soup rest for a few minutes before serving. It is also excellent served at room temperature.

Note: Lentils continue to absorb water like a sponge long after they’ve finished cooking. In this case, you can certainly add water before reheating, but you will need to taste for salt. You can also just let them absorb as much as they want and eat the dish with a fork.

Sauces & Shapes includes a recipe for fresh pasta all’uovo (egg dough): 450 grams tipo 00 flour to 5 medium or large eggs, or 4 extra-large or jumbo eggs. It also includes a detailed description on how to hand-roll and machine-roll fresh pasta.

To my mind, Sauces & Shapes’ section on Basic Dough is reason enough to buy this book. The introduction to the pasta all’uovo recipe begins: “As important as it is to develop feel and instinct when making dough, there is a metric formula for making pasta all’uovo.” Zanini De Vita presents what any Bolognesi no doubt instinctively knows at birth: mix 100 grams of 00 flour with an egg (i.e., a medium egg weighing near 50 grams without its shell) per serving. I use this 2:1 ratio all the time as my general rule of thumb when making fresh egg pasta. Certainly the type and blend of flour and level of workplace humidity impact dough, but it’s hard to go too far off the rails when making fresh egg pasta if you stick to 100 grams of flour to 50 grams of egg.

A final note on Sauces & Shapes: Ms. Fant writes really well. And call me a prude, but I think it refreshing to read a new cookbook that doesn’t drop an f-bomb or other colorful expletive on every other page. Fant is a wonderful writer and it’s a pleasure to read her carefully crafted text. Let’s hope that Zanini De Vita and Fant have another book or two (or three) in the works.

Spinach Soup

When I started writing A Serious Bunburyist, I penciled out a list of five favorite recipes that I wanted to cover: Fergus Henderson’s Beetroot, Red Onion, Red Cabbage, CrèmeFraîche and Chervil Salad; Richard Olney’s Potato and Leek Soup; and Paul Bertolli’s Cauliflower Soup. Another Bertolli soup made this short list, a Spinach Soup from his Chez Panisse Cooking [1988] with Alice Waters.

With autumn here—perhaps the best growing season for spinach, along with spring—it seems like the perfect time to finally enjoy this extraordinary soup. Bertolli writes “[t]his is one of the simplest and most economical soups I know of, and it takes very little time to make.” If you are quick with a knife, this soup goes from cutting board to table in 30 minutes. And nothing is lost to speed. To my taste, Bertolli’s Spinach Soup ranks as one of the most delicious soups in my entire cookbook collection. As a starter, Bertolli’s recipe serves 8.

4 tablespoons unsalted butter

5¼ cups water

1 large carrot (4 ounces), diced

1 stalk of celery (2½ ounces), diced

1 medium yellow onion (6 ounces), diced

3 bunches of spinach (1 pound, 2 ounces), de-stemmed, washed and drained

Salt and pepper

Melt the butter in a wide stainless-steel pot (at least 5-quart capacity). Add ¾ cup water and the carrot, celery, and onion. Cook at a low simmer, covered, for 20 minutes.

Add the remaining 4½ cups water and bring to a boil. Add the spinach and cook over high heat for 1 minute, stirring until all of the spinach is well wilted. Do not cover the pot: volatile acids, which are released when the vegetable is heated, will condense on the lid, fall back into the pot, and cause discoloration. Purée the entire mixture thoroughly in a blender, do not sieve, and transfer the soup immediately to a hot tureen. Season with salt and pepper to taste, garnish as desired, and serve immediately.

As to garnishes, Bertolli suggests a few options in his introduction to the recipe. Consider adding garlic butter or crème fraîche thinned to the soup’s consistency. Better yet, he writes, serve with “grated Parmesan, small buttered garlic croutons, and extra virgin olive oil drizzled over the surface.” Personally, I think this is all gild for the lily; I serve the soup without any embellishment.

A word or two on selecting and cleaning spinach: look for perky, fresh leaves with an intense green color. A good bunch will squeak when squeezed. Bertolli prefers a smooth-leaf spinach over the heavy, crinkle-leaf varieties, such as Bloomsdale, but writes that either type works well in this soup.

Take care washing fresh spinach, which often harbors sand and dirt. After stemming, place the leaves in a very large bowl filled with cold water and mix the spinach around with your hand. Wait a minute for any sand and dirt to drift away to the bowl’s bottom.  Then gently lift out the spinach so as not to disturb the settled grit. I typically repeat this process a couple more times especially if the spinach seems particularly dirty.

Finally, my dear editor suggested that I remind you to take care when blending hot liquids. I heed the counsel of the talented and scientifically-minded Heston Blumenthal. Heston Blumenthal at home [2011] describes how to liquefy soup: “The contents of the pan need to be transferred to the jug of the blender while still warm, as they’ll liquidize more efficiently like that. That said, no matter how eager you are to get the soup done, resist the urge to pour it into a blender while it’s still piping hot. If you put a hot liquid in the jug and close the lid, the heat can cause the air pressure to build to such an extent that, when you hit the switch, the soup forces its way out. So let it cool for a few minutes, then fill the jug no more than two-thirds full. Put on the lid but remove the small inner section, hold a folded tea-towel over the top, then press the button. Leave it for long enough that the contents are fully and evenly liquidized.” 

Abbotta Pezziende

The Encyclopedia of Pasta [2009] by Oretta Zanini De Vita contains 310 entries beginning with abbotta pezziende, a short, flat, rhombus-shaped pasta from Italy’s Abruzzo region. To make this shape, use a wooden rolling pin to roll out dough into a sheet of pasta. Then, after wrapping the pasta sheet around the pin, draw a knife down the pin’s length to slice the sheet into a pile of long, multi-layer strips. Cut the pile into narrow strips that measure about 4 cm/1.5-inches in width. With a bias cut, section the narrow strips into diamondesque-shaped pieces and you have abbotta pezziende.

Pictures help illustrate the process.

If you want to make a traditional version of this shape, Zanini De Vita writes that abbotta pezziende contains durum-flour, water and salt. As is the case with most traditional shapes, variations evolve overtime. I found contemporary recipes that call for equal parts durum and soft wheat flour; some of these recipes use whole eggs in place of water. I use a dough made with 100 grams Caputo tipo 00 flour, 100 grams Giusto’s Extra Fancy Durum flour, 2 medium whole eggs and a large pinch of salt. Depending upon the size of the eggs and other variations inherent in making fresh pasta (e.g., temperature, humidity, flour), you may need to add a bit of water to bring the dough together. After kneading for about 10 minutes, I wrap the dough in plastic to rest for about 30 minutes at room temperature.

Abbotta pezziende serves as a great introduction if you want to try making fresh pasta with a rolling pin because the shape is rather on the thick side (about 2mm, which is just a little thicker than a US Quarter). As for the hand rolling of the dough, I use the technique described in Marcella Hazan’s Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking [1992]. Don’t be discouraged if your first efforts fall short of success. Hand rolling pasta takes practice, but, once mastered, becomes a thing of beauty. Case in point, take a look at Eric Wolfinger’s short film of Thomas McNaughton of Flour + Water hand rolling pasta. The Ten Speed Press will publish their yet to be titled cookbook in the fall of 2014. Mark your calendar! (Update: Ten Speed published Flour + Water Pasta in September 2014.)

The one common thread you find when researching abbotta pezziende is its sauce: almost every source suggests dressing the pasta in a simple, soupy tomato sauce flavored with garlic, basil and pecorino cheese. I found variants that add chickpeas, lentils, fava beans and even asparagus. Guanciale occasionally shows up as an ingredient, too.